Platters, trailer trash and how not to take pictures...

Ligers...

 This...

 

...not this.

Despite what Napoleon Dynamite may have inadvertently led you to believe, ligers are indeed real creatures.  They are feline hybrids and they are freaking monsters.

I am right now, at this very moment, coming to you from Hangar 9, where I am enjoying a very tasty brew.  That's right, I am working from a bar.  Let's hear it for free wireless internet!  I may have to make a habit of this.

And as nice as that may be for me, it will not necessarily make for a better blog post, at least not this time.  As much as I may try, I am not very good with taking pictures of stuff as I am working on things.  Thus a lot of this may be written as opposed to pictorial.  Or it may just be a shorter post; in which case it may indeed be a good post depending on your reading habits.

Enough muckity-muck; on to the goods.

If you follow me on Facebook (side note: my marketing consultant wife would probably say I should encourage you to go to my face book and "like" me and such, but I honestly do not care.  That stuff is not terribly enjoyable to me.)...if you follow me on Facebook you may have seen that I have been coming around on the platter making.  In the last post I said that my platter endeavors were less than satisfactory, only getting a 15 inch platter out of 18 pounds of clay.  After that though I was able to stretch a 17 - 18 inch platter out of 15 pounds of clay.

The platters 6 before being trimmed.  Even with three less pounds of clay, though, there is still a lot of extra clay to be gotten rid of.

This is the scrappy mess of a wheel after the cutting.  And this is after cleaning up most of the trimmings 4/5ths of the way through.  Oh well; so it goes.

On a completely unrelated note, I got a trailer!

A very short time after I got my truck all set up with a camper (for hauling art fair stuffs and camping at those art fairs), my truck decided to give up the ghost.  Although I never put any pictures or anything up here, I got a new truck, but no camper.  Instead of going the camper route the wife and I decided to get an enclosed trailer to haul stuff around.  And it has tons more room and lights for camping at shows.  Good deal.  Now all I have to do is learn how to back it up without running over anything.

Ok, it is getting late (ish) and I am out of pictures, so I am going to officially throw this out into the ether and head home.  But first...Artificial Lover.  Not real sure how to describe this other than oddly good.

Up next...what is the biggest potato ever grown?

Monkeys, pie and how not to fix a truck...

 

 The first monkey to be sent successfully into space was Albert II, a male rhesus monkey, who made it to a height of 83 miles (134 km) on June 14, 1949. Albert II was carried aboard a V2 rocket as well, though his fate was not as lucky as that of the fruit flies: a problem with the parachute on the recovery capsule sadly led Albert II to his death from the force of the impact upon landing.

Courtesy UniversityToday.com.

This past Sunday my sweet wife did something unprecedented...she baked a pie.  Scratch that, she baked two pies.  It is not like she never bakes pie, but it is pretty damn close.  If you count the one she baked for me Sunday, I am averaging one pie every five years.  It is ok though.  She made me a pecan pie and it was freaking fantastic.  Which naturally leads to the question, how long does it take one person to eat a whole pecan pie?

The last piece...such a sad, sad day.

I managed to make this one last two days but it took a great deal of restraint.  I probably could have polished it off  as soon as it came out of the oven.

And after she finished making my pecan pie she made a chocolate pie for herself.  The thing I have always thought was kind of funny about chocolate pie is that it is just chocolate pudding in a shell.  Why not just put it in a bowl and save yourself the trouble?  

On a side note, these are the egg yolks she used to make her pie.  Now those are some big, orange yolks...definitely NOT from factory farm chickens.

 And now for the (unfortunately) continuing saga of the truck.  I thought the fuel filter did the trick.  I took the truck for a spin after I switched it out and it ran fine.  The next day I went into town to run some errands and my trusty, reliable truck shit on me again...twice.

Luckily I was right next to the sweet wife's place of employment and was able to swing it into the parking lot.  There it sat for the past week plus; I finally go it home today. 

 Now, it could be fixed.  Since the fuel filter didn't correct the problem, it is probably the fuel pump...or something else fuel related.  The alternator also appears to have gone by the wayside, though.  Again, it could be fixed, but the sweet wife and I have been dabbling with the idea of getting a new truck anyway, so now seems like a pretty good time.  I am actually going to look at a truck tomorrow, so hopefully the saga will conclude by the week's end.

**Wait!  There is late breaking news on the truck front!  My two year old son just said he could fix my truck with prunes...perhaps...perhaps...

In studios news, I would like to again sing the praises of the portable, home made damp box.  I think I did a post on it a while back, but I couldn't find it.  The idea originally came from Meagan Chaney and I have been using it successfully since I read her post.  Basically you fill the bottom of a plastic container with plaster.  When the plaster is set you saturate it with water and add a lid...boom, instant damp box.

I have had a lid in one for a few weeks that was actually too dry to trim when I put it in.  I pulled it out today and it trimmed just fine.  Perhaps a little on the dry side still, but good enough to get the job done.

Compost crock says, "Me eats garbage, me makes good dirt!"

 And thus ends the Simple Circle Studios blog post number...whatever it is.  Now I have to go brush my teeth; good oral hygiene and whatnot.  

Next time...how tall is a kangaroo?

-Rob, Simple Circle Studios